Often in America the government waits for something to fail miserably before engaging in a high effort high cost activity that requires a lot of coordination and public buy-in.
Random ship hits a bridge.
Shakes fist at sky "the government".
It sounded much more like a common trope, "the do-nothing government just lets things fail, doesn't take action until something fails".
A bridge got hit by a container ship at speed and folks here are talking about this like the bridge was not up to standard, or why there was a bridge there at all when they know nothing about the locale. I am not a structural engineer, but I am going to go ahead and guess that not much would still be standing from a direct hit from a container ship. And from observation bridges like this exist all over the world and don’t regularly get struck by container ships.
It was a freak accident.
If we want to point fingers or question things, perhaps if anything the question is why the container ship lost power repeatedly? Was this a known issue before leaving port?
You're right, I don't. But I do know there are other locales where they seem to explicitly avoid bridges crossing heavy ocean traffic.
I know they exist, and perhaps after this they'll exist a bit more.